'Chelsea Lately'

Benjamin Reed / Los Angeles Times

E!, 11 p.m. weeknights Just turned 35, Chelsea Handler is narrowly the youngest of the late-night hosts, and though she professionally paints herself as something of a disaster -- her latest bestseller is titled "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea" -- and continually points up the low-rent, low-viewership nature of the show, she occupies her space with aplomb and a sort of moral authority that takes the edge off the meanness of some of the humor. She has something of a young, post-feminist Joan Rivers about her, but drier, and less hysterical, in the clinical sense, and even when she seems to be seeing the jokes in her monologue for the first time as she reads them off the teleprompter, she stays funny.

E!, 11 p.m. weeknights Just turned 35, Chelsea Handler is narrowly the youngest of the late-night hosts, and though she professionally paints herself as something of a disaster -- her latest bestseller is titled "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea" -- and continually points up the low-rent, low-viewership nature of the show, she occupies her space with aplomb and a sort of moral authority that takes the edge off the meanness of some of the humor. She has something of a young, post-feminist Joan Rivers about her, but drier, and less hysterical, in the clinical sense, and even when she seems to be seeing the jokes in her monologue for the first time as she reads them off the teleprompter, she stays funny.